When color development is carried out after a silver halide photographic light-sensitive material is exposed to light, an oxidized aromatic primary amine developing agent reacts with a dye forming coupler to form a color image. In this process, color reproduction by a subtractive process is generally utilized. In accordance with this process, dye images of cyan, magenta and yellow, which are complement colors of red, green and blue, respectively, are formed in order to produce images of red, green and blue.
Phenol derivatives or naphthol derivatives are mainly used as cyan color image forming couplers. However, the color images formed from conventionally employed phenol derivatives or naphthol derivatives have some problems with respect to durability. For example, color images formed from the 2 acylaminophenol cyan couplers as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,367,531, 3,369,929, 2,423,730 and 2,801,171 generally have inferior fastness to heat. Color images formed from the 2,5-diacylaminophenol cyan couplers as described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,772,162 and 2,895,826 generally have inferior fastness to light, and color images formed from 1-hydroxy-2-naphthamide cyan couplers generally have inferior fastness to both light and heat.
On the other hand, color images formed from 5-hydroxy-2(1H)-quinoline derivative or 5-hydroxy-3,4-dihydro-2(1H)-quinolinone derivative cyan couplers as described in Japanese Patent Application (OPI) Nos. 104333/81 (corresponding to U.S. Pat. No. 4,327,173) and 102936/83 are stated to have good fastness in comparison with other cyan couplers. (The term "OPI" as used herein refers to a "published an unexamined Japanese patent application".) However, these couplers are still insufficient in terms of preservation for a long period of time. Further, these couplers are disadvantageous because they easily crystallize when added to the photographic emulsion, due to their low solubility in an organic solvent having a high boiling point.